Container and method of manufacture thereof



Jan. 18, 1966 H. FEHRES ETAL 3,229,887

CONTAINER AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURE THEREOF Filed May 21, 1963 2 Sheets-Sheet l INVENTORS HANS PEI-IRES BY DENNIS GuT-rEmoeE W 7%, 0% ATTYS.

Jan. 18, 1966 H. FEHRES ETAL CONTAINER AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURE THEREOF 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Filed May 21, 1963 M w m w S m... WA NET T. H T 8 v INC-G 7 SR.

mm HM BY M United States Patent 3,229,887 CONTAINER AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURE THEREOF Hans Fehres, Amstelveen, Netherlands, and Dennis Gutteridge, Timperley, Cheshire, England, assignors, by mesne assignments, to Inland Steel Company, Chicago, 111., a corporation of Delaware Filed May 21, 1963, Ser. No. 281,990 Claims priority, application Great Britain, May 22, 1962, 19,640/ 62 6 Claims. (Cl. 229-55) The present invention rel-ates to containers and, more particularly, to the formation and construction of an improved container of the type having a body wall formed of a plurality of superposed layers of sheet material. In its principal aspects, the invention is concerned with an improved body wall construction for such containers, and to methods of manufacture thereof, which permit and enhance the connection of such a body wall to a container closure or end member.

Heretofore, a typical procedure for forming a laminar container of fiber or other sheet material has been to wind a web of the material on a mandrel in convolute form for example, by feeding the web at right angles to the mandrel. A suitable adhesive is generally applied to the face of the Web, thus permitting the convolutions to set into a composite unitary wall. Since at least one, and often two, end closures must be secured to the wall, a web is selected that is greater in Width than the desired height of the finished container, thus permitting the marginal edge at one or both extremities of the body wall to be bent inwardly. Such bending action serves to form a flange to which the container end closure is secured, for example, by gluing, stitching, or in any other suitable way. customarily, V-shaped incisions are formed in the extremity of the laminar body wall to be bent prior to the bending operation, thus removing the surplus sheet material that would otherwise be present in the flange because of the smaller inner diameter thereof.

However, containers formed in the foregoing manner have many disadvantages which impair their usefulness and render the containers less desirable from a commercial standpoint. Merely by way of example, since the incisions or gaps extend entirely through the wall thickness, the resulting container wall is weakened in the vicinity of the flange. Moreover, such incisions or gaps cause a roughened container appearance. Another undesirable feature of such containers resides in the fact that the teeth or tabs defined by the incisions tend to resume their original position-that is, the tabs tend to bend back into the plane of the container wall. This not only makes it difficult to apply and secure the end wall to the flange, but there is also a tendency for the connection between the flange and the end wall to become unst-uck, or to otherwise separate. Additionally, the operations required to form incisions in a shaped laminar wall are sometimes quite complex and often require the use of special equipment which does not find universal application in the formation of containers having other cross-sectional shapes.

It is a general aim of the present invention to provide an improved laminated container, and method of manufacture thereof, which overcomes all of the foregoing disadvantages and which is characterized by its ease of manufacture.

A more specific object of the invention is the provision of an improved container wall construction, and method of manufacture thereof, which permits of economy in manufacture, yet which is characterized by its sturdiness and reliability in use.

A related object of the invention is to provide a lamina'ted container wall and end connection which is free of 3,229,887 Patented Jan. 18, 1966 any incisions or gaps extending entirely through the wall and which is not only smoother and neater in appearance, but is also stronger than the more conventional container constructions.

It is another object of the invention to provide a laminated container wall construction having an integral peripheral flange which is substantially free of any tendency to return to its original unflanged state.

In another of its important aspects, it is an object of the invention to provide an improved procedure for removing the surplus material from the flange portion of a container formed of superposed layers of sheet material.

An ancillary object of the invention is the provision of a method for forming a laminated container wall construction which permits of the use of relatively simple and conventional sheet forming equipment.

Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent as the following description proceeds, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIGURE 1 is a fragmentary bottom view of a container embodying the features of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a vertical sectional view taken substantially along the line 22 of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary plan view of a web of sheet material suitable for use in forming a container in accordance with the present invention; and,

FIG. 4 is a diagrammatic perspective view of an exemplary system for forming a container body wall embodying the features of the present invention.

While the invention is susceptible of various modifications and alternative forms, a specific embodiment thereof has been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that it is not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but, on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as expressed in the appended claims.

Referring more particularly to the drawings, there is illustrated in FIGS. 1 and '2, an exemplary container, gen erally indicated at 10, having a body wall 11 formed of a plurality of superposed layers 12 of sheet material. As the ensuing description proceeds, it will become apparent that the present invention will find use in the formation of laminar containers having a wide variety of cross-sectional configurations and formed of a wide variety of sheet materials. However, in order to facilitate the ensuing description, the invention will here be described in connection with a novel container, and method of manufacture thereof, having a generally cylindrical body wall construction 11 formed of a plurality of superposed layers 12 of a fibrous sheet material such, merely by way of example, as paper.

In the exemplary container 10 shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the marginal edge 14 of the lower or bottom extremity of the container 10 is bent inwardly at substantially right angles to the axis of the container body, thus forming a eripheral flange generally indicated at 15 which, with the illustrative cylindrical container, simply takes the form of an annular flange defined by radially extending portions of the laminations 12. In this instance, the annular flange 15 is secured to the peripheral edge 16 of a substantially flat container closure or end 18, for example, by gluing, stitching, or in any other suitable manner.

In accordance with one of the important aspects of the present invention, provision is made for removing the surplus sheet material in the flange 15 which would otherwise tend to buckle or distort the flange as an incident to bending the laminated wall 11 inwardly to a smaller inner peripheral dimension, yet wherein the peripheral flange thus formed is free of alined gaps extending entirely through the laminations 12. In the exemplary form of the invention, this is accomplished by providing a plurality of incisions 19, in the radially projecting portions of the laminations 12 with the incisions formed in the outermost layer 12a (FIG. 1) being olfset relative to those in the adjacent or intermediate layer 1212. Similarly, the incisions 19 formed in the intermediate layer 1212 are offset not only relative to those in the layer 1211, but also relative to the incisions in the innermost layer 12c.

In carrying out the invention, the incisions 19 may be cut, punched, or formed in any other suitable manner, in at least onemarginal edge of each of a plurality of separate sheets 12a-12c of material while the latter are still in a substantially flat position, with the adjacent incisions in each sheet defining tabs 20. The sheets are then placed upon on another in face-to-face relation so that the incisions in each layer are offset relative to the incisions in each adjacent layer. One or more sets of such sheets may then be seamed together edgewise in any suitable manner (not shown) to form a peripherally continuous body wall 11, the extremity or marginal edge 14 of which contains the incisions 19 thus formed.

Referring to FIG. 1, it will be noted that the incisions 19 there shown are generally V-shaped in configuration, with the sheet material thus removed serving to compensate for the reduced peripheral dimension which results from formation of the flange 15. However, while such V-shaped incisions 19 have been found to produce effective results, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the desired amount of sheet material removal could be achieved by formation of incisions having other shapes. Indeed, Where the resulting overall thickness of the formed flange 15 is not critical, the incisions 19 may be constituted simply by slits, in which case adjacent tabs 20 in any given layer would slightly overlap one another.

In carrying out the present invention, the layers 12 of the laminated body wall 11 may be formed by wind ing a web 21 (FIG. 3) at substantially right angles to the axis of the container body wall (as contrasted with a spiral winding operation) with the convolutions of the web 21 defining the layers 12a-12c. In this type of container side wall construction, the incisions 19 are spaced equidistantly along the longitudinal edge or edges of the web 21, with the spacing between adjacent incisions being selected relative to the peripheral dimension of the body wall to be formed such that the peripheral dimension is evenly indivisible thereby. Thus, when the web 21 is wound upon itself, the incisions in each layer will be ofliset relative to the adjacent inner layer.

In accordance with another of the important aspects of the present invention, provision is made for reducing in gradual or stepwise fashion, the transverse depths of successive incisions in the web 21 so as to compensate for the different radial widths that the bent portions of the layers defining the flange 15 inherently assume during a bending operation, thus insuring that the incisions 19 in the narrowest or outermost layer or layers 12a, 121) do not extend upwardly into the bend or vertical portion of the body wall 11. To this end, and as best illustrated in FIG. 3, the incisions 19 are formed in the marginal edge 14 of the web 21 in such a manner that the first incision 19a formed (i.e., that incision located in layer 12c closest to the end of the web covered by layer 12b) is of greater transverse depth than the last incision 19b formed (i.e., that incision in outer layer 12a closest to the uncovered end of the web). The intermediate incisions 19 between the first and last incisions 19a, 1% may be of progressively less transverse depth such as the straight line or stepwise reduction shown in FIG. 3 or, alternatively, all of the incisions located in the innermost layer 120 may have a depth corresponding to that of incision 19a while the depth of all incisions in successive outer layers 12b, 12a decrease in stepwise fashion with the depth of all incisions in outer layer 12a corresponding to the depth of incision 19b.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that in those instances where all of the incisions have the same transverse depth, for example, corresponding to the depth of incision 19a, the incisions located in the narrow outermost. layer of the flange 15 will, to an extent, tend to project, into the bend or vertical portion of the body walll11,i thus somewhat impairing the overall container appearr ance, and occasionally, reducing the strength of the wall. On the other hand, if all of the incisions 19 in the web were similar in depth to that of the incision 19b in outer layer 12a, the incisions in the wider, inner most layer would terminate radially inwardly of the bend, thus somewhat reducing the effectiveness of the construction and tending to form wrinkles in the outer periphery of the innermost layer 12c.

The present invention is also concerned with a novel.

method for forming laminated containers of the type shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. To this end, there is diagrammatically illustrated in FIG. 4 an exemplary system for forming such containers during a single operation.

In forming laminated containers having at least one inwardly extending peripheral flange 15 in accordance with the present invention, the web 21 is fed to, and wound upon itself about, a winding implement which here takes the form of a mandrel 22 in such a manner that the web is fed at substantially right angles to the axis of the i mandrel to form a plurality of superposed layers. As the web 21 is fed from a supply spool (not shown) or other. source, incisions 19 are formed in at least one marginal I edge 14 thereof by any suitable cutting or punching mechanism, here diagrammatically represented at 24. The cutting mechanism may simply comprise a pair of cooperating rolls or punch elements 24a, 24b respectively having a series of punches and punch openings (not shown) for producing incisions in the web while the latter is disposed in a flat position and is passing therebetween.

Such an arrangement permits of formation of incisions in any desired pattern as, for example, with equidistant spacing or at random. Moreover, the punch elements may be dimensioned to produce incisions of either the same; depth or incisions which decrease in depth in stepwise fashion. Alternatively, the cutter or punch element may be moved upwardly either gradually or intermittently to provide incisions of decreasing depth, the cutter being.

one face of the web for the purpose of applying adhesive thereto. This serves to insure that the laminations 12a- 12c will constitute a composite or unitary body wall 111. A folder, which may simply comprise a folding iron or shoe 26, is provided for bending the marginal edge 14.

and tabs 20 inwardly onto the top face of the mandrel 22, thus forming a peripheral radial flange 15 as the .web is fed onto the mandrel. Finally, when the body wall 11 and flange 15 are formed, and the web 21 is severed by 3 any suitable cutting means (not shown), the container end 18 (FIGS. 1 and 2) is secured to the flange 15, for example, by gluing, stitching, or the like.

While the above procedure has been described in connection with a system employing cutting or punching means for forming incisions 19 as the web 21 is being fed to the mandrel 22, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the incisions could be formed in a preceding operation. And, of course, it would also be possible to either wind the web 21 about a rotating mandrel 22, or to wind the spool (not shown) holding the sheet material about a stationary mandrel.

We claim as our invention:

1. The method of forming a laminated container body wall having a plurality of superposed layers comprising the steps of forming a plurality of spaced incisions of successively decreasing depth in at least one marginal edge of a web of sheet material while the web is in a substantially fiat position, and winding the web upon itself at substantially right angles to the axis of the body wall with the incision having the greatest depth located adjacent the covered end of the innermost layer and the incision having the least depth located adjacent the free end of the outermost layer.

2. The method of forming a container body wall having a plurality of superposed layers comprising the steps of forming equidistantly spaced incisions having progressively decreasing transverse depths in at least one marginal edge of a web of sheet material when the web is in a substantially flat position, positioning the end of the web having incisions of greatest depth adjacent .a winding implement, winding the web about the winding implement at substantially right angles to the axis thereof to form a laminated body wall having a peripheral dimension evenly indivisible by the spacing between adjacent incisions and with the outermost body wall lamination including the end of the web having incisions of least depth, and bending the tabs defined by the incisions inwardly at substantially right angles to the axis of the implement with each tab in successive outer layers overlying portions of two adjacent tabs in the adjacent inner layers.

3. The method of forming a container body wall having a plurality of superposed layers comprising the steps of feeding a web of sheet material to a forming mandrel, successively forming a plurality of spaced incisions in at least one marginal edge of the web as the web is being fed with the transverse depths of successive incisions decreasing in stepwise fashion, winding the web about the mandrel at substantially right angles to the axis thereof to form a laminar body wall, and bending the marginal edge of the web having the incisions formed therein inwardly at substantially right angles with respect to the mandrel axis to form a peripheral flange.

4. A container body wall comprising a plurality of superposed layers of sheet material, a plurality of spaced incisions formed in the marginal edges of each of said layers adjacent at least one extremity of said body wall, the incisions in each of said layers having a transverse depth slightly greater than the transverse depth of the incisions in the next adjacent outer layer so that the incisions in each of said layers decrease progressively from the innermost one of said layers to the outermost one of said layers, the incisions in each layer being 01T- set relative to the incisions in each adjacent layer.

5. A peripherally continuous container body wall comprising a web of sheet material wound at right angles to the axis of the body wall with each convolution thereof defining one of a plurality of superposed layers, and a plurality of substantially equidistantly spaced incisions formed in at least one longitudinal marginal edge of said web with the first incision adjacent the covered end of the innermost layer of said web having a transverse depth greater than the transverse depth of the last incision adjacent the free end of the outermost layer of said web, the depths of intermediate incisions between said first and last incisions decreasing in stepwise fashion from said first incision to said last incision, the spacing between adjacent incisions being such that the peripheral dimension of the body Wall is evenly indivisible thereby so that the incisions in each layer are ofiset relative to the incisions in each adjacent layer.

6. A peripherally continuous container body Wall comprising a web of sheet material wound at right angles to the axis of the body wall with each convolution thereof defining one of a plurality of superposed layers, and a plurality of substantially equidistantly spaced incisions formed in at least one lon itudinal marginal edge of said web with the first incision adjacent the covered end of the innermost layer of said web having a transverse depth greater than the transverse depth of the last incision adjacent the free end of the outermost layer of said web, the depths of intermediate incisions between said first and last incisions decreasing in stepwise fashion from said first incision to said last incision, the spacing between adjacent incisions being such that the peripheral dimension of the body wall is evenly indivisible thereby so that the incisions in each layer are offset relative to the incisions in each adjacent layer, the extremity of the body wall defined by the marginal edge of said web having said incisions formed therein being bent inwardly at substantially right angles to the axis of said body wall, the inwardly bent portion of said body wall defining a laminated peripheral radial flange dimensioned such that the incisions formed in each layer of said flange terminate within the outer perimeter of that flange layer.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,665,033 4/1928 Jensen 2295.5 2,053,678 9/1936 Page 2295.5 2,192,424 3/1940 Wilson 9339.1 2,242,829 5/1941 Leighton et a1, 2295.5 2,395,754- 2/1946 ONeil 9339.1 2,820,584 1/ 1958 Hendry 2295.5 2,888,184 5/1959 Hendry 229--5.5 3,006,522 10/1961 Arneson 2295.5

FOREIGN PATENTS 639,401 6/ 1950 Great Britain.

FRANKLIN T. GARRETT, Primary Examiner. 

1. THE METHOD OF FORMING A LAMINATED CONTAINER BODY WALL HAVING A PLURALITY OF SUPERPOSED LAYERS COMPRISING THE STEPS OF FORMING A PLURALITY OF SPACED INCISIONS OF SUCCESSIVELY DECREASING DEPTH IN AT LEAST ONE MARGINAL EDGE OF A WEB OF SHEET MATERIAL WHILE THE WEB IS IN A SUBSTANTIALLY FLAT POSITION, AND WINDING THE WEB UPON ITSELF AT SUBSTANTIALLY RIGHT ANGLES TO THE AXIS OF THE BODY WALL WITH THE INCISION HAVING A GREATEST DEPTH LOCATED ADJACENT THE COVERED END OF THE INNERMOST LAYER AND THE INCISION HAVING THE LEAST DEPTH LOCATED ADJACENT THE FREE END OF THE OUTERMOST LAYER. 